


When Stars Reflect on the Sea, There You Shall See Me

by yourguardianangel



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Titanic Fusion, Angst, Durin Family, Durin Family Feels, Family Bonding, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Titanic - Freeform, Titanic AU, but potential deaths of certain side characters, its a titanic au after all, none of the story mains though, will tag deaths as they come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 05:26:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3679602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourguardianangel/pseuds/yourguardianangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ship of dreams. The unsinkable. The voyage of a lifetime.<br/>Bilbo has heard it all. </p><p>He doesn't really start to believe it until he is thrown into the way of the Durin heirs and their sharply dressed, sharp-eyed uncle on the first day of their journey.</p><p>(Titanic! AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Stars Reflect on the Sea, There You Shall See Me

The bracing wind tugged at Bilbo’s carefully tamed curls. He blinked, squinting against the bright sun, and raised a hand to shield his eyes. With the other he waved at the faceless crowds from high above, allowing the sights, sounds and senses to wash over him like the waves far below. The white iron railing still smelled of fresh paint, the wooden panels sparkling with lacquer beneath his fingers. Other passengers crowded around him, waving to the excited onlookers as the very floors of the ship hummed to life.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Mister Gandalf?” Bilbo called over the chatter of excited voices, rising up from pier and all around him. His older companion stood beside him, assessing the view for himself, but at Bilbo’s words he smiled down at him reassuringly and placed a warm hand upon his shoulder.

“It is an idea, Mister Baggins, and you can make of it whatever you will.”

Bilbo waited to see if he would say anything more, but the older man simply smiled benignly, as though pleased with the general state of the universe, and waved a wrinkled hand gracefully at the crowds below. Bilbo fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“Cryptic as a bloody fortune teller,” Bilbo muttered to himself, but his thoughts were not unkind. There was a very slight lurch, and the enormous ship began to slide away from the dock. Children chased them to the very end of the pier, and as they sank into the distance, Bilbo looked towards the horizon. He breathed in deeply through his nose, savouring the burn of the icy breeze in his throat, and smiled.

This voyage was going to be a journey full of unexpected opportunity, and Bilbo resolved to grasp them in whatever way he could. 

\---

“Excuse me- pardon me, madam- boys, wait! Let me just- oh, pardon me- Fili! Where is the key!”

The corner of a suitcase smacked against Thorin’s ankle in the crowded corridor of the ship, and he hopped on one foot as he tried to rebalance himself. His own arms were laden with trunks and suitcases alike, and he simply prayed that his nephews had enough common sense and direction between the two of them to find their cabin door and open it without somehow sinking the ship.

 _If anyone could find a way to sink the unsinkable, it would be those two,_ Thorin thought wryly, as he narrowly avoided knocking a lady’s hatbox from the teetering pile of luggage she was carrying. He apologized yet again, bowing his head graciously as she huffed at him, and pushed forward. His nephews were nowhere in sight, and he was beginning to lose hope of ever finding his room or, indeed, his family.

“Uncle!”

Thorin spotted the combed blonde curls of his nephew peaking over the crowd further down the corridor, and stood up straighter. Ducking and weaving through the gaggling chaos of families proved difficult, but Fili held the door open for him with a smile and gave him an encouraging slap on the back as he finally detangled himself from the fray.

“We thought we’d lost you,” Fili grinned, taking a suitcase from Thorin’s worn hands.

“You did,” Thorin groused, “ _twice_.”

His nephew paid him no mind, the young man instead placing his suitcase on the upper bunk bed. His younger brother, dark hair already mussed and flopping across his forehead like a mop, was sprawled across the lower of the bunk beds, fingers turning the pages of a thin booklet.

“We left you the biggest bed,” Fili told his uncle, nodding his chin towards the other side of the small cabin. Thorin nodded his appreciation to Fili, who smiled once again at the acknowledgment and returned to unpacking his things. Thorin took a moment to inspect the room, laying his things upon his cot. It may have been the larger of the beds, but it was certainly not by much; he had been unable to obtain first class cabins for them all at such late notice. His nephews didn’t seem to mind. Thorin himself was mostly just impressed that it had running water.

“Did you know that this ship has _three engines,_ Uncle?” Kili asked him, raising his face to flash an excited smile at his uncle. Thorin returned it, huffing as he opened his trunk. The hum of the ship was comforting beneath his feet.

“I thought I’d heard something like that,” Thorin replied, pulling one of many suits from his luggage. He did not want it to get any more wrinkled than he could avoid, sliding it onto one of the narrow hangers in an equally narrow cupboard. He repeated the process several times, until he deemed the rest of his belongings safe in his trunk, and slid it beneath his bed.

“Come on, Kili,” Thorin said. “You need to unpack as well.”

“But Uncle,” he whined, “I haven’t finished reading this yet-“

“And you have plenty of days to fill with reading that,” he countered, and with a drawn-out sigh he closed the booklet and swung his legs out of his cot. At thirteen, Kili had become all arms and legs, a positive beansprout who Thorin did not doubt would exceed his older brother’s height, much to Fili’s own horror. Kili scowled at the suits he pulled from his own luggage, and Thorin had to reign in his urge to chuckle at the youngster. His brother had already grown a little more decorum than his sibling, although he had always been the slightly more reserved of the two. Thorin had been mildly impressed to find his oldest nephew’s suits already hanging inside the cupboard when he opened it.

“No one is going to care if my clothes have a wrinkle or two in them,” Kili grumbled as he shoved a waistcoat onto a hanger.

“They will if they think we are below them,” Thorin warned. Fili frowned from his bunk.

“What do you mean?” he asked. Thorin fought the urge to sigh.

“Not everyone on this ship is likely to think our wealth is as _legitimate_ as theirs is.” Thorin’s lips curled downwards. Fili looked baffled.

“But- But we _earned_ it! Fair and square! The mines have been in our family for generations!”

“Not enough, I’m afraid,” Thorin found himself scowling at his cupboard in much the same way that Kili was. He closed his eyes, smoothed out his features. It was only a few days, only a few short days, and then they’d be back in the land of the prosperous and the opportunistic. Thorin was well and truly sick of the old world, filled with its old families, their veins flowing with old money that they had not lifted a finger to obtain for themselves.

“That is why we must be on our absolute finest form, boys.” He settled them with a serious gaze. “We must give these people no reason to think anything less than their very best of us.”

Fili nodded gravely, and Kili gave a nod of acknowledgment. Thorin watched them for a moment more, then returned to organizing his things. There was only so much warning he could give them; it was up to them to do what they would in the end. He double-checked their passports, tickets, and funds. Everything was in order.

Kili had settled himself back onto his bed, necktie loosened and several shirt buttons undone as he pored yet again over the ship’s statistics. Thorin clicked his tongue against his teeth. 

“Do you boys want to get some fresh air with me?”

\---

The mainland had long faded upon the horizon, the afternoon giving way to the first pinkish hints of sunset. The crowds had thinned on the higher decks, the brisk Atlantic air proving too much for many of their more sensitive souls. Bilbo couldn’t bring himself to leave, though. The sparkling hues of the ocean fanned out in front of him like an expansive sheet of iron, and the feel of the wind against his wrists and neck was too invigorating to abandon for the likes of the first class dining room. Gandalf had adjourned a while ago, walking cane in hand, and Bilbo had let him. Funny old man, that Mister Gandalf was. Bilbo didn’t even know him that well, if he was perfectly honest. Most of his knowledge about his travelling companion had come from mutual acquaintances, glorified urban legends, and his own few brief meetings with the man prior to their embarkation. The man was quite the eccentric, Bilbo had been told, but in his early days he was also quite a prolific and successful businessman. Bilbo still couldn’t quite recall how it was exactly that they had come to the agreement that he would travel to America with the man, as little more than an ear to complain to and his honorary assistant in avoiding socialization with other members of the elite. Really, Bilbo wasn’t complaining. It wasn’t like there was anything left for him in England. Gandalf had found him. a faceless London clerk in a tedious backroom job, and offered him a chance at something _more_ , whatever that was. The thought frightened him, when he thought about it for too long (which was often). His chest buzzed with anxiety about his future’s uncertainty, but it was also a strange sort of relief to him. He felt that he had been living little more than a baseline of everyday existence for so long. Too long. Who was he to begrudge a few perfectly rational nerves?

The ship dipped beneath his feet as the hull broke against a stray wave, and Bilbo was startled back to the present by a sudden and sharp jab at his back. A small wheeze of pain escaped him and the waves were suddenly far too close below him for comfort, his feet uselessly dangling above the deck. A squeak of fear rose up in the back of his throat as he clung to the ship’s railing. A hand grabbed the back of his shirt, and his feet found the floor with a jarring smack against the timbers. The fear of somehow getting thrown overboard still pounded heavily in his chest.

“I’m so sorry sir!” A young voice came from behind him. Bilbo turned a grim face to look at his assailant. The child- for this was a child, despite his impressive height- looked as though he was ready to fling himself over the railing in shame, eyes round saucers below a dark fringe that needed a good and proper combing. Bilbo could not be mad at such an uncoordinated puppy of a person, no matter how hard he tried.

“It’s quite alright,” Bilbo replied rather faintly, smiling a wobbly smile although the space between his shoulder blades still smarted. It wasn’t this boy’s fault.

“It takes a while to get accustomed to the movement of the sea, doesn’t it?” The boy nodded cautiously, his eyes still wider than a baby bunny’s, but the tension was seeping from his frame even as Bilbo watched. He let his heart rate relax, counting his breaths before he bothered attempting conversation.

“What’s your name, then, chap?” Bilbo asked him, but the boy’s words were stolen away.

“Kili!” The voice was followed by the pounding of footsteps, and a blonde boy- no, this one was far closer to being a man- brought a heavy hand down upon the child’s shoulder.

“I told you not to wander off on your own, and yet here you are, causing commotions and injuring people! What ever have you got to say for yourself?”

“It was merely an accident, sir, nothing more,” Bilbo told the young man reassuringly. He straightened, noticing that they still had unfamiliar company, and cleared his throat.

“I must apologize formally to you, sir, for my brother’s clumsiness,” he eyed the boy heavily, and a blush climbed Kili’s cheeks. His brother paid that no mind. “Our mother would have done better to give him the gift of coordination. Please forgive him his ineptitude.”

“There is nothing to forgive!” Bilbo insisted, waving a hand at them.

“The lack of coordination is shared, I assure you, mister…?”

“Durinson,” the blonde man offered. “Fili Durinson.”

“Well, Mister Durinson, it seems that we were both simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact,” Bilbo continued, straightening his jacket, “if it wasn’t for your younger brother Kili here, I suspect I would have been tossed overboard by that last wave anyway. His quick thinking very much saved my day.” Fili looked somewhat uncertain, but Kili’s eyes had lit up with such gratitude that Bilbo felt proud of himself. He'd always had a soft spot for the underdog.

“And what mischief is it that my nephews have been inflicting upon our fellow travellers?” a low voice said from behind Bilbo, and he turned to see who had joined their conversation. He was momentarily blindsided by the stunning view laid out before him; icy blue eyes, more piercing than the depths of the ocean below; dark hair streaked with the first strands of grey winding neatly through tamed curls; broad shoulders wrapped in an exquisitely tailored pinstripe suit. The man was intimidating in his stature, if not his height, and _oh god_ , Bilbo realized with mounting panic that the man was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to answer a question that Bilbo had entirely forgotten.

“Kili was being clumsy again,” Fili offered, and Bilbo felt a rush of thankfulness to the young man. “Almost knocked him overboard on the last big wave.”

“ _But_ I pulled him back before he could fall!” Kili tried, looking to Bilbo once again for backup. Bilbo was more than happy to do so, if the blue-eyed man was going to keep talking to him.

“Indeed! If he hadn’t been there, I daresay I would have fallen over regardless!”

The blue-eyed man raised an eyebrow at him, assessing, his gaze shifting between his nephew and Bilbo. He blinked, his lips twitching from their serious pout into the vague suggestion of amusement.

“Well, mister..?”

“Baggins,” Bilbo offered, “Though everybody calls me Bilbo.”

“Mister Baggins, my nephew has caused you an inconvenience, rescue or not,” the man said. “It would be my honour if you would allow us to make it up to you over dinner this evening, in the first class dining room.” Bilbo felt a faint heat rising up his neck at the thought. _How ridiculous, he’s just hoping that I don’t sue his family,_ Bilbo thought to himself. _Still,_ a quieter part of him acknowledged, but he spoke before he could let that little part get its opinion in on the whole matter.

“I would love to,” Bilbo agreed, and the boys’ uncle offered him a brief smile.

“Then we shall see you at six, Mister Baggins,” the man said, and with a short nod to his nephews, he turned. Kili followed him like a dog with it’s tail between its legs, and it was only while watching the man’s retreating back that Bilbo realized he had not gotten the man’s name.

“Thorin.” Bilbo turned to see Fili still watching him. “His name is Thorin. My uncle.” Bilbo nodded in thanks, but the young man was still simply watching him, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. Without his brother next to him, Bilbo could see exactly how young Fili looked in the general order of things. His suit was as flawlessly tailored as his uncle’s, but he still possessed an incredible amount of vitality, and appeared almost uncomfortable in his clothes. He still looked like a child, dressing up in his father’s suits and shoes and playing pretend at being an adult. Perhaps he still was.

Fili seemed to decide something, and without so much as a cursory nod he turned on his heel and swaggered off primly in the direction of his family. Bilbo took a moment to process the strangeness of everything that had just occurred, and let a long breath of air hiss out between his teeth.

Well then.

\---

“Are you sure that you are alright with this?” Bilbo asked once again, looking over his shoulder in the reflection of the parlor mirror. Gandalf was spread out luxuriously across a chaise lounge, deeply absorbed in a newspaper written in German. At Bilbo’s words, he glanced over the top of his paper, his eyes crinkled in a smile.

“Of course, Bilbo, why ever would it not be?” Gandalf asked him. Bilbo heard the crinkle of a page turning as he fussed with his cufflinks. He huffed to himself.

“Because you brought me along as company and already I am doing a lousy job of it!” Bilbo eventually spouted, noticing now that his bow tie had slipped out of place. The older man chuckled behind him.

“Ah Bilbo, you have mistaken me!” Gandalf said. “I brought you along so that I could _avoid_ keeping company! I never wanted a babysitter.”

“But still…” Bilbo whined, searching for words to express his feelings. Gandalf remained unmoved.

“Go on, you, go have dinner with your Durinsons, I’m sure they’ll miss you if you don’t go soon.” He eyed Bilbo once again over the top of his newspaper.

“And when you get back, tell me if that Thorin is as attractive as I hear the ladies say.”

Bilbo spluttered and groused his way to a hasty exit. He could hear Gandalf’s laughter as he shut the door behind himself.

\---

Bilbo couldn’t deny it, he simply couldn’t; the man was magnetizing. He had barely even entered the dining room, the sounds of polite laughter and string music drifting through the air like perfume, before his eyes were drawn to the unmistakable figure and his nephews. Thorin had broken tradition, it seemed, and if the shielded, sour glances he was receiving from the severe-faced blond man two tables over and his son were any indication, it was somewhat of a scandal. Bilbo honestly could not care less what some of their fellow diners thought; the blue silk bowtie matched the colour of the man’s eyes perfectly. Bilbo approached the table, and Thorin was quick to take to his feet, followed by his nephews.

“My apologies, Mister Baggins,” Thorin said graciously, grasping Bilbo’s hand within his own. His grip was stronger than Bilbo was used to from the hand of an upperclassman. “We were told that they would not hold the table if we waited in the atrium.”

“That is perfectly alright, Mister Durinson,” Bilbo offered, although he was somewhat confused as to why that should occur. He had seen other people milling around outside, waiting for their own guests to join them for seating. “It should be I who apologizes for my tardiness; I’m afraid I am struggling with finding my way about the ship.”

“Don’t worry, Mister Boggins,” Kili piped up, “Uncle Thorin keeps getting lost too. I think he would end up in the swimming pool whilst looking for the tearooms if we didn’t keep an eye on him!” Bilbo let out a burst of surprised laughter, and was even more surprised when Thorin himself joined him, albeit somewhat more quietly.

“Ah, you’ve revealed my hand all too soon, Kili,” Thorin said amiably, and he extended the chair for Bilbo to take a seat.

Talking with the Durinsons turned out to be far easier than Bilbo could ever have imagined; Kili was more than happy to provide anecdote after anecdote of their adventures throughout the continent, of their mother back in Paris, and of Thorin’s many mishaps with directions and the like. It became quite clear that, despite his imposing and quite frankly, intimidating demeanor, Thorin was quite the hapless man himself. Furthermore, he seemed perfectly at ease with letting his nephews expose him for what he truly was, smiling ruefully at them both every now and then. As they opened up to him, so too did he return the gesture, sharing his own meager life experiences with them, and how he came to be amongst the first-class cohort. 

“They’re a dreadfully stuffy bunch, Mister Baggins,” Fili confessed, and Kili nodded eagerly at his side.

“Oh?” Bilbo said, glancing to their uncle. He let them talk, watchful, his eyes scanning the room. Bilbo supposed that he did not want those around them to overhear.

“It’s true,” Kili said, “especially those Greenwood people. They called me a ‘dirty miner’ in the hallway!”

“I doubt they’ve ever even seen dirt,” Fili muttered, and Thorin gave him a warning look.

“Enough, boys,” Thorin warned them. Across the dining room, Bilbo could see grey eyes watching them with vague disgust. Thorin met his eyes.

“There are some less accepting of what they deem ‘new money’, Mister Baggins,” Thorin said. Bilbo smiled at him.

“I dare not wonder what they would think of me, then!” He joked, “the only reason I’m even on this ship is my generous benefactor.”

“Ah yes, you mentioned him earlier,” Thorin said, happy to shift the conversation to smoother waters, “a Mister Gandalf, you said?”

“The very man himself,” Bilbo agreed. “Put me up in first class rooms, the whole thing.”

“And why has he done that?” Kili asked.

“Kili,” Fili hissed at his brother. Bilbo waved Fili down.

“Oh, something about thinking I needed a ‘good and proper adventure’, or something. Quite the eccentric, he is. I barely know the man!”

“I remember hearing about him from his business days,” Thorin said. “Didn’t he run an explosives manufacturing company?”

“Perhaps he did,” Bilbo shrugged, “Honestly your guess is as good as mine.”

“Well,” Fili said, “it’s mighty lucky that this Gandalf person chose you, isn’t it? Else we would never have met you.”

“And that would have been a terrible shame,” Thorin said quietly, and Bilbo was struck by his sincerity.

“Indeed,” he replied, “I feel rather the same way.”

\---

They walked along one of the upper esplanades under the vastness of the night sky, and Fili tried to convince Kili that the constellations he was making up were quite real as Thorin smoked his pipe. Perhaps it was the first class champagne that was loosening his tongue, but Bilbo simply could not hold back his thoughts as they wandered along the extensive wooden deck.

“You know, for all of your nephews talk this evening, I still do not know what is bringing you to America,” Bilbo asked. The side of Thorin’s mouth curled upwards in an approximation of a smile as he squeezed his pipe between his teeth.

“My father is, as you know, the current owner of a substantial number of mining operations,” he said. “What, until recently, even I was unaware of was the fact that my father is dying.”

“Oh,” Bilbo said. He could not think of anything else to say, suddenly feeling incredibly awkward about stumbling across such a sensitive topic.

“Oh indeed,” Thorin said, “it was always going to happen, I suppose, but now that I am faced with this situation I must admit, I’m at somewhat of a loss.”

“In what way?” Bilbo asked. Thorin’s nephews were far ahead of them now, talking loud enough to each other that the sound of their voices still carried upon the breeze.

“I’d expected my father’s heir to come of age before he passed,” Thorin admitted finally, and he turned his face upwards to release a long stream of smoke. Bilbo frowned.

“You are not your father’s heir?”

“Well done, Mister Baggins,” Thorin said wryly. “It is not me, but Fili.”

Bilbo gaped.

“But… He is so young!”

“He turns eighteen in seven months. I shall be guiding him in whatever ways I can until he sees fit to do so himself.”

“I do not understand,” Bilbo said. “Why did your father pass over you?”

“Because I asked him to,” Thorin said simply. He glanced over at Bilbo. “He wasn’t happy about it, but he respected what I wanted. I fear I am a terrible disappointment to him.” Something about it all was still tugging at Bilbo, some little thing that he couldn’t quite grasp.

“ I just… I don’t understand why,” Bilbo admitted. “Why would you pass over your family’s legacy?” Thorin was silent for a while, and through the champagne haze Bilbo began to worry that he had offended the man.

“Because some things are worth more than the things you dig up out of the ground,” Thorin replied eventually, and Bilbo followed his gaze to the boys causing mischief far ahead of them. Bilbo felt a small, almost imperceptible shift inside himself. _Oh._  
“You know,” he said, fingers tugging at one of his cufflinks, “I simply cannot explain it. I don’t know what it is, Mister Durinson-”

“Thorin, please.”

“Thorin, of course- what was it I was saying?”

“You were talking about something that was unexplainable.”

“Oh yes, of course! I cannot fathom how it can be, but somehow, Thorin, I feel completely at ease in your company. Isn’t that strange?”

“Terribly,” Thorin agreed with him amiably. “Even more so when I say that I too feel the same.” He turned a smile down towards Bilbo, one hand holding the curve of his pipe and the other tucked neatly into the small of his own back. His words made Bilbo’s ears itch with heat, though Bilbo himself did not understand quite why. He didn’t bother stifling the urge to return Thorin’s smile.

“Would you… Care to join me for lunch again tomorrow?”

“My nephews were planning on going to the gymnasium tomorrow. I expect that they will want to stay there all day,” Thorin replied slowly, one eyebrow raised. Bilbo did not know where he found the courage to say what he did next, but he raised his head and flashed him his most disarming smile.

“Who said they would be joining us?”

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter soon, I'm going to try and balance writing my other story with this one as well.  
> It's unbeta'd, so please feel free to tell me if anything is really incorrect in the comments.   
> (I am trash, I apologize, please forgive me for butchering every character in this god forsaken franchise)


End file.
